Directed by James Gartner / Written by Christopher Cleveland
and Bettina Gilois

GLORY ROAD – at face value – contains many of
the standard, stock elements of other run-of-the-mill sports genre
pictures. It has the vigilante and highly determined coach; the team of
misfits who can’t seem to get along but find ways to overcome differences
and be a cohesive team; and the road from spiritual and literal defeat to the final “big game” where
seemingly everything is on the line and – inevitably – the underdog team
achieves final victory. GLORY ROAD never once professes to not
embody these key elements.

No, the subtle secret to the overall
effectiveness of the film is in the manner in which it’s not just
about the young, cantankerous players, their often rocky relationship with
their tough-as-nails coach, and their final moments of absolution when they
band together in a unified effort to be the best they can be. GLORY ROAD
has a much larger and more prevalent modus operandi – it strives to tell an
important story of America’s cultural and social history that, to some,
is an unfortunate distant memory. This film does a very noble and competent
job of taking this otherwise historical footnote and amplifies it. After
leaving the film one just may wonder why the events it dramatizes have not
been focused on in any detail in history classrooms. Just because its narrative
is a sports story should not alone preclude its lack of value and relevance.

With a U.S. history degree firmly under my
belt, I feel somewhat ashamed to have little – if not any – knowledge of
what a crucial figure Don Lee Haskins was. According to my brief
research, he was a basketball
player that played for over three years under the tutelage of legendary
coach Henry Iba at Oklahoma A&M. After a brief stint coaching women’s
basketball he was hired on as a head coach of Texas Western College (later
renamed the University of Texas at El Paso). He did so for from 1961 to
1999. At the time of his retirement his statistics were quite astonishing.
He was tied for fourth place as the NCAA most winningest coach with a
719-353 record. In his 38 years he suffered only 4 losing seasons, which in
itself is an incredible credit. On paper, Haskin’s sterling set of
credentials can’t be undervalued.

Yet, GLORY ROAD does not tell the story of
Don Haskins career, nor does it feel slavish to focus on his lifetime
accomplishments on the court. Rather – and more importantly – it
focuses on a decidedly narrower segment of his career at Texas Western in
1966. It was during this time where he took a relatively unknown group
of players and defeated The Wildcats of the University of Kentucky (under
legendary coach Adolph Rupp) to a NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. The
victory, according to many sports analysts, is one of basketball's most
stirring and shocking upsets. The latter sentiment has been juiced up and
milked by far too many sports writers. Although Texas Western was less
revered than their Kentucky opponents, their record was a brilliant 27-1
entering into the final NCAA game. In hindsight, The Western Team was not a
struggling “Cinderella Team” as many historians have lead on.

Yet,
this 1966 Championship victory may now be more regarded and respected for
its overall societal implications. If anything, Haskins and his ’66 team can
be credited with revolutionizing the sport of basketball and changing the
shape of amateur and professional sports forever. His final game starting
line-up for the NCAA tourney had five black players on it.

Big
deal, right?

Wrong. Kentucky’s squad was all white and head coach
Rupp was largely regarded as a supporter of racial segregation, or at least
very reluctant to recruit black players (some sporting historians disagree
on this assessment and it remains controversial to this day). Nevertheless,
Coach Haskins saw past the color barrier and did something no other
basketball coach did before him, and GLORY ROAD is a strong and involving
film for following this story.

Now, it should be noted that Texas Western
had been recruiting and playing black players in the 1950’s when no other
school was offering them any types of scholarship. When Haskins arrived in
El Paso he already inherited some of the school’s black players, but he
decidedly took it a step forward with his rigorous recruitment of other
black players. It is here, as with the final NCAA game, where Haskins and
his El Paso team deserve a coveted spot on the history of the de-segregation
of the sport.

Yes, his college did have black athletes
before his arrival and many other schools were moving towards a larger and
more global policy of inclusion and de-segregation in school sports. But
the crucial significance with Haskins is with his NCAA team and the
boldness of his move to play an all-black starting line against an all-white
team. This can not be unappreciated. Athletes in basketball, and
perhaps in other sports, were effectively emancipated because of Haskins'
actions. The fact that this game is not as significantly studied and
remembered seems somewhat sad in many ways.

But, that’s why GLORY ROAD is an
engrossing and fascinating film. Like other great biopics about
historical figures – sports related or not – it begs you to want to learn
more about its story. The film’s real strength is in the manner it
confidently marries the trappings of a sports picture with issues of social
relevance. It’s more of a civil rights history film than a sports history
film and it concentrates its attention more on the personas and less on game
dynamics. You are not going to come out of the film with a better
understanding of the game of basketball. Contrastingly, you should come out
of the film with a better understanding and respect of the actions Haskins
took to putting a winning team together and the implications (and
unfortunate consequences) those actions had. Yes, he helped to de-segregate
sports, but it was not a squeaky clean road for him and his team to take.

Josh Lucas, in one of his finest performances
to date, plays the young up-and-coming Haskins as he is recruited to Texas
Western to forge his winning basketball team in the 1965-66 season. At the
time there seemed to be a rule (basically unwritten) that you could only
have a certain number of “colored” boys on your sports team. Haskins knew
this and, at a risk to his reputation and occupational livelihood, he
daringly overlooked that. He essentially inherited a team that was
underachieving, albeit not entirely weak. Yet, he seized the opportunity by
not looking at schools for recruitment of players, but rather in the
backyards and alleys of America. Why does he do this? For starters,
his college was a poor one that has no money to recruit the more highly
prestigious white talent. Secondly, he saw natural talent in some black
players who toiled around in mundane existences in the North. With the
offering of a full scholarship and a chance to play competitive b-ball, that
seemed to be all the coaxing he needed to recruit them. His rich college
advisors, obviously, did not like the prospects of their team going “all colored.”

Of course, as with all sports genre pictures
like this, clashes result between the coach, the black players, and the
white players. The coach wants the black members to play a more
“fundamental” game and not the Harlan Globetrotter style of flashy moves
that they have been accustomed to play. There is resistance on either side,
but surprisingly there is a mutual acceptance of each other’s methods to the
point where both are combined together to form a successful one-two punch on
the court. GLORY ROAD goes against the grain of other sports films in this
respect. It’s not just about the coach teaching them an methodology and
forcing the team to stridently stick to it. The team learns from the coach
and the coach learns that maybe there is room for the players’ mode of
play. Their relationship becomes much more reciprocated and appreciated in
this capacity.

GLORY ROAD, thankfully, also does not
sidestep the overall issue of racism and bigotry. For a film that has the
more saccharine rating of PG, GLORY ROAD deals with the often violent and
vile implications of racism front and center. We see how the South still
despised the idea of black players and how this is manifested in both verbal
and physical attacks on the players. They are often spat on and yelled at
with condescending epitaphs at games, whereas some are even accosted in
bathrooms. A few of them have their motel rooms sprayed with
derogatory messages. Even the white team-mates display levels of
animosity. GLORY ROAD tells a tense story that is frank and honest with the
realities of its time.

The basketball scenes and all of the
motivational moments scenes are competently handled. GLORY ROAD’s strength
is not in these moments (you’ve seen one moment of a coach trying to rally a
team then you’ve seen them all). However, despite having known the outcome,
the final “big game" does have a level of anticipation and excitement. I
also liked the handling of the role of Adolph Rupp himself, played in a
subtly brilliant and assured cameo performance that is far too short for its
own good by the great Jon Voight. His role has baggage, to be sure, but
Voight wisely does not extrapolate a performance from this real life figure
and paint him as a one-sided racist that is a pure caricature. Voight plays
him in a careful balancing act. He's the antagonistic presence of the film,
but he is not overly reprehensible. Lucas’ portrayal of Haskins is equally
layered and nuanced. He’s not a saintly figure either. Oftentimes, Haskins
is shown as a tough and hot-tempered general on the court. He wants to win,
and will not let anything stand in his way.

The film does a very good job of carving out
Haskins story and Lucas, as stated, has a field day capturing the essence of
the man. The film’s only real weakness is in the development of the black
athletes themselves. We sort of get an impression of them, but they are
presented more in generalities and less as fully realized characters. Some
of the supporting performances are fine, like Derek Luke
(playing Bobby Joe Hill), Damaine Radcliff (playing Willie Scoops Cager),
and Schin A.S. Kerr (playing David Lattin), but the film felt a bit
negligent with its focus on them. We feel their pain and understand their
frustrations, but a bit more investing into them should have been
warranted. Other characters, like Haskins wife (played by Emily Deschanel)
are so limited that you forget they are there. Then again, this is a story
larger than the one about marital strife in the wake of a husband’s hunger
for a championship. The film tells a story too important for those
melodramatic underpinnings.

GLORY ROAD reminded me considerably of
another exemplary sports biopic – 2004’s very underratedMIRACLE
– in the sense that it tells a real life
tale of a coach and his aspirations and concludes with a final game where
you know the outcome. Yet, both films work extremely well in their attempts
to create emotionally grounded characters and both effectively set their
time periods in proper social-political context. But GLORY ROAD goes even
further in the way it attempts to emphasize and explore a mostly forgotten
moment in the history of racial equality. It has those standard,
obligatory moments that scholars of the genre have come to expect in
these types of pictures. Nevertheless, the film is well crafted, solidly
acted, and does a polished job of combing a familiar sports story with one
of a historical social heartbeat. It’s deceptively easy to dismiss GLORY
ROAD a simpleminded and lightweight genre picture. In the large scheme of
things, the film deals with larger issues than basketball and it does so
with a surprising competence and tact.